Black Girls STEAMing Through Dance, Design, and Code

• In Event: Humanizing Computer Science Education: Addressing Critical Issues for K–12 Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Black Girls STEAMing through Dance (BGSD) is an out-of-school program and research initiative that operates across several contexts, including an after-school program for 7-12 year old Black girls in West Philadelphia, a co-curricular mini course program for 5th and 6th grade girls at West Philadelphia Middle School, and a professional development course for teachers. BGSD intentionally uses Dance as culturally sustaining pedagogy to encourage Black Girls to engage in the STEAM fields of Design and Computer Science (CS).

Design, Coding, and STEM
Design education has historically engaged the practices of problem solving, making, and form-giving through a creative and iterative process. “Design problems help learners develop intricate inquiry skills, including how to engage in an iterative feedback loop of observation, testing, and evaluation of solutions.” (Kafai, Fields, & Searle, 2014). It’s in the technical processes and context of designing that Design and specifically Industrial or Product Design has clear connections to STEM and STEAM Education.
In aligning Design and STEM, more specifically technology and CS, BGSD leverages technological hardware like programmable micro controllers, e-textile circuits, augmented reality programs, and post-production video software to create wearable devices and videos for dance performances.

E-textiles, Coding, and Design
Building STEAM literacies or skills, is one of the core goals of Black Girls STEAMing through Dance as we seek to understand if literacies in Design and CS will lead to identity formation amongst participants. The literacies of design and CS can be found in the skills associated with varying STEAM disciplines as well as the cognitive approach to designing by creating, evaluating, and iterating. For the students in BGSD the context of understanding is founded in embodied movement and more specifically dance.
Dance is introduced to STEM to create culturally relevant engagement. Likewise, e-textiles was introduced to the maker movement as means of crafting technology through soft materials using sew-able and programmable electronic hardware. With Leah Buechley’s invention and introduction of the Arduino Lilypad—a washable, sewable, programmable microcontroller—the integration of e-textiles into maker education became a popular alternative to pedagogies built around robots and drones which are applications that attract predominantly while male students (Buechley, 2013). In contrast, the design and making of e-textiles combines aesthetics, crafting, sewing, and computing technology which has been shown to connect with students across genders and is a more popular application for girls (Kafai, Fields, & Searle, 2014). The advantage of working with e-textiles is it makes learning electronic circuits visible and accessible (Kafai, Fields, & Searle, 2013). E-textiles also allows students the freedom to fail while iterating and experimenting with technology (Resnick, Berg, and Eisenberg, 2000).
After a series of workshops and skill-building modules, students choreograph a dance and plan how the dance can be augmented through coded e-textile lights and video effects. Students use cloud-based block-coding apps to design the light patterns on their costumes and accessories and AR video to capture their dance performance.

Authors

• Raja Schaar, Drexel University

• Michelle Rogers, Drexel University

• Ayana Allen-Handy, Drexel University

• Valerie Ifill, Drexel University

• Monique Woodard, Drexel University